Orphans
by K Hanna Korossy
Summary: Death's Door missing scenes: They only had each other now.


**Orphans**  
K Hanna Korossy

"He's stable for the moment. Just have to see," the doctor said without much encouragement.

There was some part of Dean that had been through so many of these hospital crises, most with surprisingly good endings, most with Sam, that he was pretty sure this one would be okay, too. Bullets to the head were...were bad, yeah. But Bobby had made it to the hospital and he was in good hands now and he still wasn't dead. Most of all, he was _Bobby_. The old codger had already had his neck snapped, stabbed himself, escaped from a wheelchair and a deal with the devil, and lived to tell about it all. He'd be okay. He would.

Dean turned slowly from the trauma bay, thoughts still churning, and caught sight of Sam.

All his rationalizations screeched to a halt.

Sam was bowed against the hospital wall, face twisted in misery and uncertainty. He looked small, adrift, _young._ Alone.

It was maybe the one thing that could've cut through the fear for Bobby. Dean rubbed a hand down his face, then dropped his shoulders back. His little brother needed him. That always came first.

He settled in next to Sam, hip propped against the windowsill behind him. It was still dark outside.

"He's gonna be okay." It was weak, but it was the first thing that came out.

Sam nodded, lips pressed tight, eyes wet. Unconvinced but wanting to believe.

Dean's own certainty wasn't as solid as he was trying to make it, but he bumped his shoulder against Sam's and managed a pained smile when his brother's eyes met his. "He's Bobby."

Sam's mouth twisted, a pained echo.

They stood in silence, two frightened kids pretending to be men.

Dean's shoulders slowly rounded, lips dipping ruefully. "You know what he told me in the car before?"

It took a moment, but Sam swiveled toward him. "What?" His voice was shaky.

Dean shook his head. "That if I died before him, he'd kill me."

Sam paused as if trying to figure out if he should laugh or not. Come to think of it, it wasn't really funny. But then his brother snorted. "He has a way with words."

"Yeah," Dean softly agreed. He tipped his face toward Sam. "It's gonna be okay." No promises about Bobby anymore, but a desperate bid for belief they were gonna get through this, one way or another.

Sam nodded again, harder this time. Just as determined to believe it. "Yeah."

His brother's faith shored him up, as it always did. But it was Dean's arm that found its way around Sam's shoulders as they waited together in silence.

00000

"The swelling's down a little. They took him off sedation. Apparently, he-he started fighting his tube. So they pulled them out, and he's breathing on his own." Put like that, Sam could see the reason for the hope that blazed in Dean's expression.

He didn't want to squash it—the doctor did say it was the best-case scenario, which he could see almost made Dean smile—but Sam had to tell him. Not warning him would make the blow even worse if it fell.

"The word's 'abrading,' I think."

"English," Dean said impatiently.

Sam winced, at least on the inside. He needed to be strong outside. "Cutting out the dead brain tissue."

He saw it all: hope fading, the momentary crush of despair, then the blankness that Dean used as camouflage. Not against him so much—they were way beyond that these days—but just how he coped.

"Dean, listen," Sam said, trying to be gentle. "We need to brace ourselves."

But he wasn't ready to. And Sam wasn't surprised.

"What do you want to do?" Dean demanded, anger redirected. "You want to hug and-and say we made it through it when Dad died? We've been through enough."

Sam didn't say anything. He had no argument to that.

Dean strode off, needing time and space as he always did. Sam craved comfort when he was hurting, but Dean had always gone off to lick his wounds alone. Funny, considering he was the extrovert of the two of them: needing to relax in crowded bars at the end of the day, seek out women to burn off the energy and adrenaline, returning afterward to their home of the day to the family that waited.

But he would think, and process, and at some point he'd know Sam was right. And maybe he would brace himself, because if the blow did come, it was going to rock them hard.

Sam shrank down onto a nearby bench. It was small comfort, preparing Dean, but it was all he could offer right now with Bobby at death's door.

_"Poor little Sammy, all by himself once more. Oh, wait. There's always me," _ Lucifer sing-songed next to him.

Jaw tight, Sam dug into his hand and waited.

00000

Sammy had only been trying to help. Dean knew that, even if he didn't want to. The kid was hurting as badly as he was.

He hovered in the waiting room door, watching Sam's slumped shoulders. Dean shouldn't have left him. It had been too much; he'd had to walk it off. But he'd left Sam there to deal by himself, with Dean's misplaced anger as company, and that wasn't right, either. He took a step inside.

Sam was pressing his right thumb into his left palm like he was trying to make a hole in it.

The hesitation vanished. Dean plunked himself down on the bench next to his brother and circled his own hand around Sam's left wrist. "He putting his two cents in?" No need to say who _he _was.

Sam, tight as a bowstring, nodded once. "It's okay."

Which meant pretty much zip right now; nothing was okay. But Dean nodded, even as his own fingers pressed into Sam's wrist.

The thumb bit still worked; Dean pretended not to know that Sam occasionally reopened the cut to make it painful again. But Dean's grip, Dean's eyes—sensations Hell had only copied imperfectly—would usually do the trick, too, without pain.

Sam let out a slow, long breath, the length of his arm pressing into Dean's as tension released.

Dean's eyes were on the cubicle where the only elder left in his life fought to survive. "When all this is over, we should find him another house."

Sam took a breath, let it out in a huff. "A house, seriously? Can you see Bobby doing the suburb thing?"

Dean's head bobbed. "Maybe, if it was near Jody's place." He smiled sideways at Sam.

Sam actually laughed at that, and gently withdrew his hand from Dean's grasp. "You're kidding. The two of them?"

"Hey, you didn't see the way he blushed when I brought up the sheriff the other day." They should probably call her, come to think of it, but Dean couldn't make himself break this fragile comfort.

"Wow."

"Yeah."

Sam sighed, deflating against his side. "I don't know what we're gonna do...if..."

Dean blinked back the hot prickle in his eyes, and leaned back. "Yeah."

00000

"Make a fist," Sam said softly, hushed even though they were alone in the treatment room.

Dean obeyed but it was clearly automatic, a shell responding to orders.

Sam felt the bones around the bloodied knuckles, watched as they shifted. Nothing seemed displaced or unusually swollen; Dean hadn't broken anything. One tiny thing less to worry about right now.

It was all Sam could focus on just now. "Open."

Dean didn't respond. As Sam peered up into his face, he was pretty sure his brother hadn't even heard him. Breathing unsteadily out, Sam uncurled the injured hand and laid it flat on his leg.

After...after Bobby... After he managed to write some numbers on Sam's hand, and almost smile at them, and call them "idjits." After he'd closed his eyes and dropped back into the pillows as they desperately called his name. After the doctor had offered her condolences and said she was amazed he'd even managed to wake and that he'd fought to the end. After, they'd just stood there, shocked still. And eventually his eyes had fallen on Dean's bloody fist, and suddenly Sam had a purpose again.

He'd steered his pliant brother into an empty treatment cubicle, finding antiseptic, gauze, and tape, while Dean sank onto the exam table. He looked as numb as Sam felt, someplace else, not even close to grasping that Bobby was...

Dean didn't jerk at the touch of the antiseptic, though at some point his eyes turned downward to follow Sam's hands as they worked. Sam wondered briefly when Dean had punched something—a wall? No, there was a tiny sliver of glass in one knuckle—and decided it didn't matter. There'd been plenty of time and reason for an explosion. Sam was more surprised Dean hadn't sent someone else to the emergency room, or been kicked out of the hospital.

Wounds cleaned and not needing stitches, he rolled the gauze carefully around his brother's lax hand. "Should be fine in a few days." He was pretty sure he'd been talking all while he'd worked, but he had no idea what he'd said and Dean hadn't reacted. "I don't think we have to worry about an infection, but we're at a hospital, so..." He already had some antibiotics tucked in his pocket.

"He's gone, Sam." The dull words startled Sam. "We're on our own."

Dean still wasn't looking at him, eyes fixed on the white wrapping. Sam wasn't sure he even knew he'd spoken out loud.

Dad's death had been so hard, but even then they'd had Bobby to lean on. Or at least _Dean_ had had Bobby. Sam wasn't orphaned: he had Dean. The generation before them—Dad, Ellen, Bobby, Pastor Jim, even Rufus—was all gone, but Sam still had someone he looked up to. Dean, however, was now the oldest left standing. He had no one left to lean on.

But maybe Sam had finally earned the right to be that support for Dean in turn.

He grasped his brother's jaw, one hand then two. Lifted the heavy head and lifeless eyes to his. Stared at them hard, willing his brother to _feel_ the words even if he couldn't really listen just now. "You've got me, Dean. You're not alone—_we're_ not alone. I've got you, and you've got me."

Dean stared at him a long moment. Then his eyes filled, even as they stubbornly refused to overflow.

Sam swallowed against the hot jaggedness in his throat and sagged down beside his brother, arm coming up to grab a handful of the back of Dean's shirt. He wasn't crying exactly, either, but his shoulders heaved and Dean's warm skin was damp against his face and he felt like something was trying to claw its way out of his chest.

The misery was so blinding, it took him a minute to notice the weight around his neck. Dean's arm, just the one, but holding him close like he was trying not to fall apart, too.

"He was your dad, too," Dean said roughly, an echo to another great loss years before. And he held on, promising in action what Sam had in words.

The comforters were comforted, the only way they had left.

**The End**


End file.
